The 6 lane national Cuban highway stretches into the horizons. Considering it’s the main transit artery of the country, it’s almost empty of traffic. Gleaming white and blue tourist buses are our main companion on the fast lane, and the slow lane and shoulder are dominated much more frequently by horse-drawn buggies and elderly tractors. Low forested mountains are visible a few dozen kilometers to the north.

Our driver, Bernales is happy to chat with Christine about life in Cuba. I am able to join in for the early getting-to-know you chat (he has family in the USA, he likes our classic Harley Davidsons that come from Milwaukee, etc) but before a third of our three hour car ride is over and the high rises of Habana are in the rearview mirror, he and Christine have moved onto politics, radio, TV, and the economy and I’m able to catch far fewer words.

The climb through the aforementioned mountains is curvaceous and beautiful. Bernales’ car is a year old Russian Lada and has no problems with the journey, but several times on this mountain side road we are stuck behind diesel belching old trucks and (probably) diesel converted old Chevies and Plymouths. Some are stuck on the side of the road, their drivers diligently deep into the engine compartments.

But we arrive without issue in the picturesque town of Viñales, where every house is a tourist-friendly casa particular, and every restaurant (somehow) boasts free wifi, cheap cocktails, and happy hours that seem to extend through a quarter of the day. Private business and competition seems to be alive and well here.

The main draw of the region are their famed mountains, called mogotes, pocked and strangely rounded from beginning their life under the ocean. The soil is rich, red, and perfect for tobacco. We deposit our bags at our casa, hosted by an elderly lady named Nene, her family, and staff, and are immediately met by a jovial young guide named Jesus and his quiet neighbor who is only introduced as “Chino” due to his mixed Latin and Asian ancestry. Jesus lovingly pats the 1952 Chevy Belair and says, I sold it to Chino a few years ago to finance a new room in my house. The engine is still original, none of that diesel nonsense. Chino shows me the engine compartment; the gas line has been moved to pull from a 5 liter plastic tank right next to the air filter, as the original tank in the rear rusted through decades ago.

Our first stop is the Cave of the Indians, a short and Cuban-tourist filled boat ride through an ocean-carved cave that still has a natural freshwater spring and river running through it. No sign of cave paintings, but the 10 minute ride has several formations that look like animals, which the driver points out helpfully in English and Spanish. Jesus waits for us at the exit, snacking on off-brand saltines.

Another stop is to a massive, perhaps 50 meter high mural painted on the side of a mogote soon after the revolution by none other than Diego Rivera, husband of the equally famous Frida Kahlo on request of el Jefe. It depicts dinosaurs, an early mammal (we thought?) and a handsome couple of nude natives striding bravely forward. Come on, it’s Frido and Diego; of course they couldn’t resist the opportunity to paint some huge naked people. Jesus regretfully points out that of course we’re not seeing the original quality of the art; the rainy season hits Cuba hard, and there are rope lines strung along the mural showing where maintenance artists need to climb up and down and touch things up – tons of paint each year, Jesus says.

We agree our favorite stop is to Rancho de Arado, an organic tobacco plantation. A bearded young man named Miguel gathers a small group of tourists around his table, pours us little glasses of a local liqueur, and tells us in perfect English how he makes a cigar. From a pile of brown, pre-dried large leaves in front of him, he selects a single likely candidate, and tears out its central vein. These, he explains, are filled with nicotine and are given to the cigarette companies; a good cigar should not use them. Then using a rounded blade and a rocking motion, he slices the leaf into thin strips and sort of kneads those strips into a lose cylindrical pile. He then selects a lesser-grade leaf to serve as the casing, and with the same kneading, rolling motion, a slender cigar begins to take shape. He then carefully cuts a circle out of a third leaf that will serve as the cap for the cigar. “Technically, you can smoke a cigar from either end, but the capped end that you cut off is the correct place to inhale from, because if you burn the capped end, the cigar may start to unravel and the ashes will drop. A cheap, poorly made cigar is recognized by how quickly its ashes fall off its end.” He hands each of us a complementary cigar and introduces the finished product. “Right now, this cigar I’ve made is too moist, so I dry it a bit with a piece of paper around it for a few minutes, then seal it shut using honey, and it goes out in the sun for about fifty minutes. Then it’s ready.” Miguel says that since all farms are controlled by the government, 90% of the product is collected for distribution to the nationalized cigar-making facilities. But farms are allowed to keep the remaining 10% for sale however they wish, which we were now holding. We purchased a bundle of 10 cigars for 40 CUC, about the same in dollars, wrapped in a tough piece of palm frond and tied shut with a string of the same. “This shows that it was purchased from a local farm as part of the 10% extra,” he explains. “If you try to leave the country with cigars that either are missing an official company seal wrapped around them, or this palm leaf, customs may confiscate them as street-purchased counterfeits, in order to protect the reputation of their brands.” He reminded us that USA law allows for 100 cigars to be imported for personal use – we shouldn’t have a problem at all on the USA side of our return flight.

Jesus and Chino return us to Nene’s house and we set out to dinner and free wifi, in my case, the first internet I’ve had in four days as Christine and her iPhone have Tamara’s only sim card (and the personal hotspot functionality is disabled; I certainly tried that first). As the evening darkens, live music begins in a few of the small discos and restaurants. We listen to an energetic group of 5-6 young men with electric violins and upright basses, maracas, and guitars play Stand By Me, No Woman No Cry, and of course the ubiquitously Latin American “Despacito” – the writers/performers of which, I assume, are billionaires by this point, as I don’t think I’ve gone longer than 8 hours in a Spanish speaking country without hearing it. A crowd of locals and tourists gather outside the dimly lit club and dance semi drunkenly in the street, openly passing around a handle of Club Havana (drinking in the streets is completely legal in Cuba).

We fall asleep to the gentle squeaking of the ceiling fan in Nene’s guest room, crickets outside, and are awakened all to soon to early-rising roosters.

“Okay, tell me the difference between your two political parties.” Frank paused for a moment and peered over the tops of his bifocals. “You cannot!” It was noon on our first full day in Cuba, and we were taking a walking tour of the old city of Havana. Tamara and Frank had been friends for years – he had been her English teacher when she started her tourism business, and in turn, she had repaid him by selecting him as her clients’ walking tour guide. A thin man with bushy gray hair, a habit of lighting up Cuban cigarettes whenever he had an opportunity (he’d excuse himself politely when Christine and I would rest or get something to eat; he never smoked while walking with us), and a fierce appreciation of Fidel and Communism, he was an excellent introduction to the idealism of the country.

We didn’t start by hashing out politics over beer, of course. In fact, when Andreas dropped us off at Old Habana’s Plaza Central at 10:30am, he demurred any talk of our respective political leanings loudly and expressively when the name “Trump” was first mentioned. We walked down the Obrapia – Bishop’s Street – on New Year’s Day and he pointed out ancient Spanish buildings that had been remodeled in the past few decades, interesting bars and hotels Earnest Hemingway had frequented, and an eyesore of an obvious 1950’s American drab conference center style of building that he said was built right before revolution as the only place in the city with a helicopter pad on top, to shuttle rich tourists from Florida 180km away. “After Fidel, it was taken to be used as a school,” he said with a small smile.

The original Spanish governor’s house in front of one of the city’s five famous squares was pointed out. One of the four streets making the square had its cobblestones replaced with wooden bricks, in order to allow the governor to have his siestas in peace. On the opposite side of the square is the famous ceiba tree where the first city council meeting for Habana was held over 500 years ago. In fact, the city is currently festooned with posters and signs for La Habana 500, which was celebrated on November 16, 2019. The tree is no longer the original, as ceibas aren’t quite that long lived, but if it hadn’t have been New Year’s Day, Frank told us anyone can walk into its little courtyard and give the trunk a rub for good luck.

It was Christine and I who slowly coaxed Frank’s political opinions out of him after we made it clear that we were genuinely curious about them and we just wanted to listen. He had the usual litany of arguments – why are your elections on Tuesdays instead of weekends? Why aren’t they holidays? Why not make them mandatory? Why are banks allowed to control your country? We told him that we agreed with him on many points, and that progressive people were indeed trying to make many of the changes that he pointed out as weaknesses. Your constitution is ancient, he chuckled – 1776? That is like, wow. He described how the Cubans just had their third post-revolution constitution laid out a few months ago, adding things like term limits for El Presidente (no more lifetime Castros), more direct representation for the citizens to elect more levels of leaders instead of only their local alder persons, and more rights for LGBT citizens. Frank agreed there were freedoms that Cuba lagged behind on, like the latter, but was adamant that a constitution that is not modified more frequently to fit changing needs of a population was only going to serve entrenched powers rather than the needy. He also believed that a single party was superior to a two party system, as the latter would only result in constant bickering and backstabbing and not even leadership. It was an interesting discussion; I’m glad we were able to convince Frank to open up to us.

Hello blog – it’s been awhile, hasn’t it. 2019 was a busy year for Christine and I. We bought a condo on the isthmus of Madison and have been preoccupied the past few months getting it somewhat settled. It’s winter break again for us, and we decided to keep our travel close to home, acquiesce to my parents’ suggestion, and do something relatively unusual all in one – a visit to Cuba. My parents visited several years ago with a homestay and guided tour and absolutely loved it, so we already had a connection. It was a simple matter for them to put us in contact with their host, a jubilant, extremely friendly woman named Tamara.

Tamara gave us all the information we needed to feel confident about buying the plane tickets. She scheduled the tours and most importantly, the transport (gasoline is about as expensive in Cuba as it is right now in Madison, WI – $3 a gallon. But the average Cuba makes about $60-70 a month – not really comparable). Our tickets would have us do an overnight layover in Mexico City first. Great! We were there in spring 2018 from Panama, this would be a great chance to get tacos again. 

And it was! Unfortunately delays at O’Hare meant that we didn’t get to Mexico City until 9pm or so, and our Midwestern stubbornness (read: lack of preparation) meant that we walked for 30 minutes from the airport to a bus stop, where we would have paid 7 pesos per person (about 30 cents) for the option to ride an hour to a stop 15 minutes walking from our hotel. Then Christine pulled out her phone, risked the international roaming fees (we hadn’t bothered to find out that AT&T had made roaming in Canada and Mexico free in the past couple years before leaving, and both of us – me with AT&T prepaid, and she with post-paid – would just use our plans as normal while in these two countries) to determine that an Uber would be 48 pesos. About $3 in other words. We looked at each other at the bus stop. This seemed like the better deal… What the heck were we doing. We got our uber and were delivered to our hotel in 10 minutes. 

The DF (districto Federal, even though they don’t use the name anymore) is a huge city. Unfortunately the region we were in wasn’t teaming with action. Heck our hotel was in a shopping mall and it took us another five minutes to figure out we needed to go through the underground parking garage to reach the elevator to take us into the hotel itself. The place was nice though, and the sympathetic attendant told us that around here, there would be no late night tacos. She was truly sorry. Unless we didn’t mind taking a taxi or uber? She could recommend a 24-hour place, in that case.

The two of us continue to be somewhat gluttons for punishment. “surely there has to be an open taqueria at 10pm in the area, this is the DF” one of us probably said. We then proceeded to waste the next 45 minutes circling a large trash dump a block away from the hotel, searching for a google maps-recommended “tacos de Sergio” which was open til midnight, so we had to hurry. We passed oozing open mounds of trash split open on the sidewalk, a muttering man in a winter coat with a huge pit bull on a leash and 4 other barking dogs around him, but when Christine and I walked through a section of town without street lights past a pile of garbage that suddenly tinkled with unexpected movement, she shrieked and bolted away from me at high speed, power walking in a way that would make Richard Simmons proud. “My mom has said she’d like to visit the City with me,” she muttered as I jogged to rejoin her. Christine and I have always traveled el cheapo all the years we’ve been dating. “We’re getting an uber back from this, though” – (note, we didn’t – I just took her around the other side of the dump that was on the main road which had all its street light working. Savings!) 

Mission 1 for tacos a failure, we regrouped at the hotel, discouraged and smelling slightly of sewage. The recommended taco place shown like a beacon in our minds, and we didn’t begrudge the $3 ride to Tortas Gigantes de Sur 12, the hotelier’s recommendation. A great find! Hopping with hungry nightlife and with a bonus second street taco stand a block away, we ate our fill of tacos, milkshakes, and fried sweet plantains for an hour. There were so many taco options on the menu we couldn’t even translate them all, and we waddled, grease-laden, back to the main street to collapse into another uber, fully giving ourselves away to convenience over thrift. 

Three hours later, our alarm clocks awoke us at 4:30. The free shuttle (yes!) from the hotel to the airport left promptly on each hour, and our flight to Havana would be at 7:30. There was much patient, mind-numbing waiting in queues in the airport – despite the fact that we never check baggage anymore, when you’re flying to Cuba, special “travel cards” are needed to be purchased and confirmed at the check-in counter. Make sure you buy your travel card for approx 20 USD at the appropriate counter first, before waiting at the check-in line. Ask me how I know.

In reading the Washington Post’s favorite stories of 2018 a couple weeks ago, I was struck by one in particular – Suzanna Walter’s “Why can’t we hate men?” article on why women do indeed have every right to hate men, if they want to. The article starts out slowly and builds steam, and then in the final paragraph, comes what struck me immediately as “bait”

Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this.

In my case, of course, hindsight didn’t need to be 20/20 because WP also posted Ms. Walter’s followup article right afterward, which she wrote about 3 months later, “Mob misogyny is nothing new. I have the death threats to prove it.” The curtain pulled back, the bait revealed – why wouldn’t a sociology professor take an opportunity to prove her point, that the kind of men she was rallying against would react in an obvious way – with calls for her firing and of course, because the kinds of men who do this can’t just stop at firing, with her murder.

She points out that she got negative feedback from both men and women, but while “some of them [were] critical of my position [….] none of them [were] threatening.” Women don’t feel the need to call for the deaths of people they disagree with, apparently. But Walters’ obvious bait caused alt-right men to froth at the mouth and see nothing but red.

So, well done, Walters’ – your duo of articles; the setup and the reveal, were masterfully executed. When I read your first article, my main thought when I reached your purposefully-incendiary final paragraph was to frown slightly, shake my head, and say “huh, well, that’s a little much isn’t it? I’ll vote for whoever I want, thank you very much.” Then immediately afterward, think to myself – “ah-hah… I see what you’re going for.” Any sane and normal man would have a reaction similar to that, or even more mild, or possibly even completely agree with her; “I’m a man, and she’s right, I’ll never vote for a fellow man again!” – fine by me, your vote is your vote; go for it!

But as expected, the internet is filled with entitled, wimpy man-children that simply are incapable of handling even reading the words of a random woman on the internet, that they’ve never met and probably (ugh, hopefully, for her safety) never will meet, either. Why are they so thin-skinned? Why can’t they simply shrug and say, “well, I disagree, but whatever” and then move on and read another article?

A few days ago, I gave “floating” (also popularly known as sensory deprivation) a try. Christine had given me a gift certificate to a local float company last year, and after returning from a vacation in China (and a 14 hour time zone difference) I thought it might be just what my frazzled brain might need.

I emailed back and forth with the owner a few times before the China trip, figuring out schedules, how to prepare, and that sort of thing. I confessed that I’d never considered floating before; like a lot of people my age, probably the first thing that comes to our minds is Homer Simpson in his float tank. New-age stuff that’s a little silly, a little wacky-west-coast kind of feel.

Anyway, the float facility itself was great. Calming music, lights, calming owner – he explained everything very thoroughly and everything was provided for. I slipped into the tank pictured at the top of this post, turned the music to low, and the room light shut off on a motion timer a moment later. Everything was great… except afterward, my back hurt like never before. Yikes.

I’ve never mentioned it on HeiseHeise.com before, but I was born with a minor genetic back deformity called “Scheuermann’s Disease” which causes a curvature of the spine, otherwise known clinically kyphosis… or less kindly, as “hunchback.” I was teased sometimes by kids in school for always looking like I was slightly slouching, and my show choir teacher sometimes ordered me to stand up straight as I was dancing, to which I’d think, “I am standing up straight! …wasn’t I?” I wasn’t diagnosed with the disease until midway through high school, but it’s never been a big deal to me. It’s a minor curvature, only 10-12 degrees more than “normal,” my back never hurt, and I got a bonus of extra large lungs (common for people with the disease) which have always aided in me in endurance running and cycling.

During the float, the buoyancy of the salt water was pushing my entire spine into a straight line. For the first 10-15 minutes I didn’t notice pain, just pressure, but as time went on, the increasing pain became all I could think about. Because float tanks are shallow – probably 6-8 inches total, I couldn’t even jack-knife my body in the water to alleviate the pressure without just giving up and fully sitting up in the water.

Afterward, I sat down with the facility’s owner and confessed to him that it wasn’t a great experience for me, while reassuring him it wasn’t his fault. He confessed in turn that he’d never heard of kyphosis before (heh, yeah – everyone’s heard of scoliosis, including Firefox’s spell checker as I’m writing this, but kyphosis can’t get no respect!) but agreed that yes, it made sense that a spine curved along the sagittal plane would react negatively to floating. He went to his computer to check in his Float Owner Group forum, but no one had mentioned it there. He even vowed to bring it up at the next nationwide Float Facility Owner’s Conference. And Google Search doesn’t turn up any public results either. When I looked, I saw that supposedly scoliosis can be comforted by this, since its curvature is along the opposing plane. Good for those folks, at least.

So, I figured I’d write a relatively short blog entry (by my standards at least) encouraging anyone who’s searched those keywords to please, check with your doctor about floating if you have postural or genetically-caused kyphosis. Postural kyphosis can supposedly be fixed by yoga, stretching, and other normal activities, but there’s a chance (and I’ll need to contact my doctor, too, if I decide to float again) that those of us with the latter might never get to experience the tranquil bliss of a float.

The owner had a positive note, though – he mentioned that out in Portland Oregon they have vertical-style float tanks, like Luke in his Bacta tank in Empire Strikes Back, (except with your head above the water) and that those might not cause the same pressure/pain problem. Now that’s a load off my back!

On the (east) shore of Hangzhou’s West Lake

In my previous entry, I touched a bit on the ability of QR codes on shared bikes, as a convenient and very cheap way to get around major cities. Shanghai has 24 million people in it, but we also visited the nearby Hangzhou, which “only” has 7 million people in its urban core. We saw bike share prices ranging from 10 yuen cents per hours, to one yuen per hour. As of this writing, a yuen is worth about 15 cents… so yeah, pretty cheap.

The bullet train to Hangzhou was cheap too, 88 yuen one-way. Clean and spacious, with somber-faced apron-wearing attendants quietly mopping the floor of footprints after each stop. On initial startup, the train would glide forward slowly, with none of the creaking and clanking noise of wheels grinding against tracks that we associate with trains. It took quite awhile to get from Shanghai Central Station to the Western station, at a pretty low speed for safety. But once out of the city, we got our first and only chance to glimpse at how rural Chinese people live. Bearing in mind too, that these folks were still only a 20-30 minute drive outside the city so we can’t truly classify them as rural as I know still so many Chinese villages exist hours away from major cities! The houses I saw though, were palatial mansions in comparison to the small apartments that the average Shanghai citizen would be able to afford. Daniel told us that Shanghai is one of the most expensive cities in China, and that housing costs are outpacing food and transportation. I told him it was similar in the USA: more than those two things, space to live in is something you can’t just import or create, so prices are skyrocketing. But these outside-Shanghai houses seem to rejoice in their expansive land options, and building 3 story homes, even though plain and unadorned on the outside (most were of the simple vertical rectangle style) they had plenty of space! Farms and rice paddies seemed to be the norm.

Okay, I got my money’s worth

Within 10 minutes outside the city, the train had increased its speed up to the rated 300 kilometers per hour and the vibrations and noises had increased to what Amtrack customers would probably classify as “normal” – I’ll admit it wasn’t the face-melting experience I might have been hoping for, but it says a lot for the quality of engineering that 300kph felt slow and comfortable, and I wanted to say “what, this is it? This baby feels like it could go so much faster!” However, Hangzhou is only an hour away at 300kph so really, by the time we got up to speed, we only got to keep at that pace for a few minutes before we were already gracefully slowing back down again to reach the first stop on the outskirts of the “small” city.

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